I saw an above-the-fold NYT article last week, describing JD Vance’s conversion to Catholicism. He was attracted to the faith, according to the article by “its small, energetic world of conservative Catholic intellectuals, lawyers and politicians prioritizes its traditional views on family”. The NYT noted that this circle includes Josh Hawley and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.
This piqued my interest in Vance’s Catholic connection, and a search turned up an article from the New Yorker, which further details Vance’s ties to the conservative Catholic movement. Finally, an article in the New Republic, tied Project 2025, Leonard Leo and John Roberts to the Catholic Information Center. TNR notes that the priest in charge of the CIC is a member of Opus Dei, an organization founded in 1928 by a Spanish priest, Josemaria Escrivá. Opus Dei is not a religious order, but rather a movement dedicated to “finding God in daily life”. In other words, members of Opus Dei remain in their chosen profession, but use their position (and influence) to further the aims of the organization.
Long ago, I was a student attending university in Washington DC. One day, I happened to mention to my roommate that I was Catholic. He was from somewhere in South or Central America (it really was many years ago), a nice polite fellow, if somewhat straight laced. A few days after that conversation, my roommate invited me to attend a gathering of a few other Catholics with him. “It’s at a little place in Georgetown” he told me, and added that there would be some interesting people there. So I agreed to go with him, and was rather surprised when we got to the meeting. This was not some church basement prayer group. It was held in a Georgetown office? apartment? Whatever the place was, the rent was not cheap. I was introduced to the other people there, one of them being a U.S. Senator from some Midwest state. I don’t recall the senator’s name or the state, but it was pretty clear that this was not just a casual get together. After introductions and some small talk, I was told that this was an Opus Dei meeting, and that, given that I was a Catholic, would I be interested in joining? I had no clue what Opus Dei was, but the vibe I got was definitely not me, so after making it clear that I wasn’t interested, my roommate and I left. There was no rudeness or threats, and eventually the whole incident faded into another memory of an oddly spent youth.
But after I read about Vance’s conversion, as well as the connections, subtle but not completely hidden, linking Opus Dei, the CIC and two conservative Supreme Court justices, I looked up the religious affiliation of other members of the court. It turns out that five of the six conservative justices on the court are Catholic, and Gorsuch is listed as Anglican/Catholic. It was then that I recalled that long-ago meeting where Opus Dei attempted to recruit the young me. What better place than Washington DC to recruit young men and women (unlike many Catholic organizations, Opus Dei is co-ed) who might one day be in a position to wield influence on government policy?
The Catholic Church is not a monolith. Joe Biden and Sonia Sotomayor are both Catholic. I know priests, nuns and lay Catholics who are as liberal as anyone who posts on DK. But Opus Dei represents a conservative strain of Catholicism that longs for the illiberal past. It was organized in direct response to the Communist movements in Europe of the early twentieth century, and was granted official recognition by the conservative Pope Pius XII in 1950. It’s stature was enhanced by John Paul II, another conservative anti-communist, who in 1982 allowed Opus Dei to hold governance over matters of religion and discipline for its members without requiring local diocesan approval.
In the past, the Catholic Church was a dominant force in many national governments, particularly in Europe and Latin America. But not so in the US, despite the large numbers of Catholics who emigrated here in the late 19th and early 20thcenturies. The Supreme Court was traditionally white and Protestant, with a scattering of Jews. But the Roberts court that has overturned Roe v. Wade and greatly extended Presidential power is almost exclusively conservative and Catholic. Should Trump be re-elected, the power behind the throne will be another conservative (if recently converted) Catholic. As other undemocratic leaders have found, Trump is easily influenced by flattery and bribes. Perhaps Trump really has been chosen by God, or at least Opus Dei’s vision of the Deity, to bring about what was impossible before now, a conservative Catholic government, in which the levers of power are controlled in all branches by the teachings of an anticommunist cleric from nearly a century ago. The Constitution guarantees the official separation of church and state. But such separation means little if those who run that government are believers in a medieval strain of religion that has little in common with what most US citizens believe or would care to be governed by.
